This reminds me of the Multi-Discipline meetings I used to be forced to attend.
I was the Activities Director in a Nursing Home, and sometimes i felt as though the other staff wanted me to mount a Broadway Show with my elderly frail patients.

So I showed ‘em. For mothers day, 1985, the patients performed and outdoor production of excerpts from Fiddler on the Roof with Costumes and sets. We did “Tradition”, “Sabbath Prayer”, “matchmaker”, Sunrise, Sunset” and “Anatevka”, and had made all the costumes and props in the craft room.

Agreed. I run into a lot of customer or 3rd party managers who love to “take over” and try to “help” the project workflow, but end up sounding like fools when they ask technical questions about things they have no idea about, and can’t understand the answers. It’s when they then ask to have the answers explained (when they didn’t know what they asked for in the first place) that the focus on the issue goes downhill...big time!

10
posted on 04/05/2014 6:09:50 AM PDT
by Dubh_Ghlase
(Therefore, send not to know For whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee.)

My observation in IT is that the first answer out of the "experts" mouth is almost always "no" or somthing with more emphasis. Stakeholders are trained to accept that and many times they dont even bother to voice new ideas.

I collect ideas, even one that may seem absurd or contradictory and then I get great satifaction out of surprsing my customers. Sometimes they are so knocked out they forget it was their own idea.

I met with our Requirements team yesterday (2 people). I came in with a proposal for briefing leadership about Requirements. I had designed a preliminary requirements process for them to follow so that they knew how to do this. I handed them this requirements process. The team then established three essential points:

1) My idea was rejected. 2) The requirements team would follow the requirements process -- as soon as someone wrote that process for them and gave it to them. 3) They would work with requirements which had already been fully validated (they just weren't sure who was expected to validate the requirements).

I asked them what they had been doing for the past year. Answer: "Not much. It's been pretty slow." "Have you written a requirements management process?" Answer: "No." "Have you managed any requirements?" Answer: "No one has given us a validated requirement."

I tried to explain that they were the people who were actually supposed to write the requirements process, and topic of the process is supposed to be "How we validate requirements".

Answer: "Oh, that's not us."

My answer: "If it's not you, then it's me. The process is in front of you. We're done."

Their answer: "We don't work for you. And you don't understand our role."

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